canal, but he had left behind a force too small to fight their whole army, especially after failing to fight when Abivard and the first few men following him had floundered up onto the bank the Videssians had been holding without effort. If they weren't going to fight, the only useful service they could perform was warning the Avtokrator. To do that, they'd have to go where he was. Abivard's army would follow them there.
He raised his voice, adding his outcry to Romezan's relentless shouts. The soldiers responded more slowly than he would have wanted but not, he supposed, more slowly than was to be expected after the trouble they'd had reaching the eastern bank of the canal.
And as the men shook themselves out into a line of march, excitement gradually began to seep into them. They cheered Abivard when he rode up and down the line. «Wasn't for you, lord, we'd still be stuck over there,» somebody called. That made the cheers come louder.
Abivard wondered if Maniakes knew his magic had been defeated even before soldiers had ridden to him with the news. He would have a wizard—more likely wizards—with him. Breaking the Videssian spell probably would have produced a quiver of some sort in the world, a quiver a wizard could sense.
Because of that suspicion, Abivard reinforced what would have been his normal vanguard with picked fighting men who did not usually move at the very fore. He also spread his net of scouts and outriders farther around the army than he normally might have. If trouble threatened, he wanted warning as soon as he could get it.
«Be particularly careful and alert,» he warned the scouts. «Tzikas is liable to be commanding the Videssian rear guard. If he is, you'll have to look for something nasty and underhanded. I wish I could guess what, but I can't. All I can tell you is, keep your eyes open.»
For the first day after crossing the canal he wondered if Maniakes had bothered with a rear guard. His own army surged forward without resistance. They made so much progress, he almost felt as if they'd made up for all the time they'd spent trapped on the far side of the canal.
When he said that to Roshnani after they'd finally camped for the night, she gave him the look she reserved for times when he'd been especially foolish. «Don't be absurd,» she said. «You can't make up that much time in one day, and you know it.»
«Well, yes, so I do,» he admitted, and gave her a look of his own. «I'd bet none of the great minstrels ever had a wife like you.» His voice went falsetto: «No, you can't say his sword sang, dear. Swords don't sing. And was his armor really too heavy for ten ordinary men to lift, let alone wear? That doesn't sound very likely to me. Why don't you change it?»
Roshnani made as if to pick up the pot of saffron rice and black cherries that sat between them and dump it over his head. But she was laughing, too. «Wicked man,» she said.
«Thank you,» he said, making both of them laugh some more. But he quickly grew serious again. «If the magic this morning had failed, I don't know what I would have done. I don't know what the army would have done.»
«The worst you could have done would have been to lay down your command and go back to Vek Rud domain. There are still times I wish you'd done it after Sharbaraz refused to let you summon Romezan.»
«That worked out well in spite of Sharbaraz,» Abivard answered. «Romezan is like me: he sees what the realm needs and goes ahead and takes care of it no matter what the King of Kings may think of the matter.»
Roshnani sniffed. «The King of Kings is supposed to see what the realm needs and take care of it himself. He shouldn't need to rely on others to do that for him. If he can't do it, why is he the one to rule Makuran?»
She spoke in a low voice and looked around before the words left her mouth to make sure no servant—or even her children—could hear. Abivard understood that; unlike Romezan, he found the idea of criticizing the King of Kings daunting at best. And Roshnani wasn't just criticizing. She was suggesting Sharbaraz didn't belong on the throne if he didn't do a better job. And if he didn't belong on that throne, who did?
Abivard answered in a voice as soft as the one his principal wife had used: «I don't want to rebel against Sharbaraz King of Kings. Can you imagine me trying to lord it over the eunuchs in the palace? I only wish Sharbaraz would tend to ruling the realm and let all of us who serve him tend to our own soup without his always sticking his finger in and giving it a stir.»
«He is the King of Kings, and he knows it,» Roshnani said with a wintry sigh. «He knows it too well, maybe. Whenever he can stick his finger in, he feels he has to, as if he wouldn't be ruling if he didn't.»
«I've spent a good part of the past ten years and more hoping– wishing—you were wrong,» Abivard said, sighing, too. «I'm beginning to think you're right. Pound me on the head with a hammer often enough and ideas do sometimes get in. From brief acquaintance with his father, it's in his blood.»
«It might not have been so bad if he hadn't had the throne stolen from him once,» Roshnani said.
Abivard gulped down his wine. «It might not have been so bad,» he said, spacing his words out to emphasize them, «if Smerdis had kept on being King of Kings and no one had ever found out Sharbaraz was hidden away in Nalgis Crag stronghold.»
When the words were out of his mouth, he realized he'd spoken treason—retroactive treason, since Smerdis the usurper was long dead, but treason nonetheless. He waited to hear how Roshnani would react to it. Calmly, she said, «Had matters turned out so, you wouldn't be brother-in-law to the King of Kings, you know.»
«Do you think I care?» he returned. «I don't think my sister would have been less happy if she'd stayed married to Pradtak of Nalgis Crag domain than she is married to Sharbaraz of Makuran. No more happy, maybe, but not less.» He sighed again. «You can't tell about such things, though. Smerdis was busy paying the Khamorth tribute, if you'll remember. That would have touched off a revolt in the Northwest sooner or later. As well, maybe, that we had a proper King of Kings to head it.»
«Maybe.» Roshnani emptied her wine cup, too. «All these might-have-beens can make you dizzier than wine if you spend too much time thinking about them.»
«Everything is simple now,» Abivard said. «All we have to do is beat Maniakes.»
First they had to come to grips with Maniakes. As Abivard had already discovered, that wasn't easy, not when Maniakes didn't care to be gripped. But having defeated the Avtokrator's best sorcery—or what he sincerely hoped was the Avtokrator's best sorcery—he pursued him with more confidence than he would have shown before.
In case his sincere hopes proved mistaken, he stopped ignoring Bozorg and Panteles and had the two wizards ride together in a wagon near his own. Sometimes they got on as well as a couple of brothers. Sometimes they quarreled—also like a couple of brothers. As long as they weren't working magic to do away with each other, Abivard pretended not to see.
He sent his part of cavalry out in a wide sweep, first to find Maniakes' army and then to slow it down so he could come up with the main body of his army and fight the Videssians. «This is what we couldn't do before,» he said enthusiastically, riding along with Turan. «We can move horsemen out ahead and make the Videssians turn and fight, hold them in place long enough for the rest of us to come forward and smash them.»
«If all goes well, we can,» Turan said. «Their rear guard has been fighting hard, though, to keep us from getting hold of the main force Maniakes is leading.»
«They can only do that for so long, though,» Abivard said. «The land between the Tutub and the Tib isn't like the Pardrayan steppe: it doesn't go on forever. After a while you get pushed off the floodplain and out into the scrub country. You can't keep an army alive out there.»
«We talked about that last winter,» his lieutenant answered.
«Maniakes didn't even try then. He just crossed the Videssian westlands till he came to a port, then sailed away, no doubt laughing at us. He could do the same again, every bit as easily.»
«Yes, I suppose he could,» Abivard said. «He could go on to Serrhes, too, in the interior, the way Sharbaraz did all those years ago. I don't think he'll do either one, though. When he came into the land of the Thousand Cities last year, he had doubts. He was tentative; he wasn't sure at first that his soldiers were reliable. He's not worried about that anymore. He knows his men can fight, If he sees a spot he likes, he'll give battle there. He aimed to wreck us when he came back this year.»
«He almost did it a couple of times, too,» Turan agreed. «And then, when that didn't work, he tried to drive us mad with the magic his wizards put on the canal.» He chuckled. «That was such a twisted scheme, I wonder if Tzikas was the one who thought of it.»
Abivard started to answer seriously before realizing Turan was joking. Joke or not, it wasn't the most unlikely notion Abivard had ever heard. As he'd learned from painful experience, Tzikas was devious enough to have
